saxophone practise in an aesthetically & acoustically pleasing piece of 1970s architecture

nice day in my sax life today (no, no valentines, no flowers, no chocolates, and I did say sax life) - I took the alto into Langham Arts today and did some practise over lunchtime in the church at St Paul's Robert Adam St.

It's such a nice room - I can't find a single picture of it online to link to, which is a pity as it shows that 70s architecture wasn't all bad (ok, the outside's a bit less than gorgeous, but the church & the blue lounge & the office area / entrance hall are nice). The church has a high, high ceiling, which looks as though a single piece of plaster/concrete has been lowered onto it and left sitting there, a rigid tent-roof over the blue-carpeted room. They took the pews out a couple of years ago - so now it's just a lovely big space, with a chancel at the front and a big Cross-radiating-light type picture/sculpture thingy on the wall behind the chancel. The whole Cross picture's made up of straight pieces of wood and colour - in fact, you can see a blue version of it in the montage banner at the top of this page on All Souls's website. You'll see (furthest on your left on the banner) All Souls's pointy rotunda, not a popular feature when Nash was around, as you can see! The next picture along in the montage is the chancel area of SPRAS - in bluescale (as opposed to greyscale!). It doesn't really merge into "All-Bar-One" as it does on the montage - we're a bit down the road (west along Wigmore St, north up Mandeville place, cut across Manchester Square past the Wallace Collection - across the road from it and also from the former site of this famous building...) from there.

It was lovely playing in the church - lots of room for the sound to roll around - and it's a really flattering room to play in - ideal for playing unaccompanied Bach in. I started working on my 3rd year Bach cello suite [yes, on the viola] (number 2, if you're interested) for my end-of-year exam in there - luscious! It gave me a much wider idea of my sound - and there're a couple of bits of wall with small |_| and |¬| shapes to stand by and bounce the sound off of to get an idea of what's going on in the immediate vicinity!

All three of Langham Arts's denizens of the day (Annette, Janet & Sammi) were very complimentary about the mournful parpings that were spilling downstairs from the church - whih was nice of them, Sammi even came up (on the pretext of delivering a letter to me) and we had a chat about learning new instruments, the Grade-1-a-thon, and gave her a go (actually, Liz was unable to resist asking for a try on the tenor when I got home today too!), which was nice.

Spoke to Sophie today, and we've arranged a lesson there (SPRAS, probably in the church - poor lay-assistants will be serenaded while they set up for the evening's groups after the lunchtime service!) on Wednesday - meeting there around 2ish. She's off to Euston for a train that evening, bari-sax (she said I could have a go of it!!! Hee Hee!!!) in tow, so we'll toot for a bit, then go in search of coffee & I'm planning to be at work earlier (1/2 term at school this week; no teaching) that day, so I might trundle along with her as an extra pair of hands, if needed!